he lived in London, and died on the 20th of September 1898. He was given a public funeral at St Paul’s. Grey was all his life a collector of books and manuscripts. After leaving Cape Colony, he gave his library to Cape Town in 1862; his subsequent collection, which numbered 12,000 volumes, he presented to the citizens of Auckland in 1887. In gratitude the people of Cape Town erected a statue of him opposite their library building.
Lives of Sir George Grey have been written by W. L. and L. Rees (1892), Professor G. C. Henderson (1907) and J. Collier (1909). (W. P. R.)
GREY, HENRY GREY, 3rd Earl (1802–1894), English statesman, was born on the 28th of December 1802, the son of the 2nd Earl Grey, prime minister at the time of the Reform
Bill of 1832. He entered parliament in 1826, under the title of
Viscount Howick, as member for Winchelsea, which constituency
he left in 1831 for Northumberland. On the accession of the
Whigs to power in 1830 he was made under-secretary for the
colonies, and laid the foundation of his intimate acquaintance
with colonial questions. He belonged at the time to the more
advanced party of colonial reformers, sharing the views of
Edward Gibbon Wakefield on questions of land and emigration,
and resigned in 1834 from dissatisfaction that slave emancipation
was made gradual instead of immediate. In 1835 he entered
Lord Melbourne’s cabinet as secretary at war, and effected
some valuable administrative reforms, especially by suppressing
malpractices detrimental to the troops in India. After the partial
reconstruction of the ministry in 1839 he again resigned, disapproving
of the more advanced views of some of his colleagues.
These repeated resignations gave him a reputation for crotchetiness,
which he did not decrease by his disposition to embarrass his
old colleagues by his action on free trade questions in the session
of 1841. During the exile of the Liberals from power he went
still farther on the path of free trade, and anticipated Lord
John Russell’s declaration against the corn laws. When, on
Sir Robert Peel’s resignation in December 1845, Lord John
Russell was called upon to form a ministry, Howick, who had
become Earl Grey by the death of his father in the preceding
July, refused to enter the new cabinet if Lord Palmerston were
foreign secretary (see J. R. Thursfield in vol. i. and Hon. F. H. Baring in vol. xxiii. of the English Historical Review). He was
greatly censured for perverseness, and particularly when in the
following July he accepted Lord Palmerston as a colleague
without remonstrance. His conduct, nevertheless, afforded Lord
John Russell an escape from an embarrassing situation. Becoming
colonial secretary in 1846, he found himself everywhere
confronted with arduous problems, which in the main he encountered
with success. His administration formed an epoch.
He was the first minister to proclaim that the colonies were to
be governed for their own benefit and not for the mother-country’s;
the first systematically to accord them self-government
so far as then seemed possible; the first to introduce free
trade into their relations with Great Britain and Ireland. The
concession by which colonies were allowed to tax imports from
the mother-country ad libitum was not his; he protested against
it, but was overruled. In the West Indies he suppressed, if he
could not overcome, discontent; in Ceylon he put down rebellion;
in New Zealand he suspended the constitution he had himself
accorded, and yielded everything into the masterful hands of
Sir George Grey. The least successful part of his administration
was his treatment of the convict question at the Cape of Good
Hope, which seemed an exception to his rule that the colonies
were to be governed for their own benefit and in accordance with
their own wishes, and subjected him to a humiliating defeat.
After his retirement he wrote a history and defence of his colonial
policy in the form of letters to Lord John Russell, a dry but
instructive book (Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell’s Administration,
1853). He resigned with his colleagues in 1852. No
room was found for him in the Coalition Cabinet of 1853, and
although during the Crimean struggle public opinion pointed
to him as the fittest man as minister for war, he never again
held office. During the remainder of his long life he exercised
a vigilant criticism on public affairs. In 1858 he wrote a work
(republished in 1864) on parliamentary reform; in 1888 he wrote
another on the state of Ireland; and in 1892 one on the United
States tariff. In his latter years he was a frequent contributor
of weighty letters to The Times on land, tithes, currency and
other public questions. His principal parliamentary appearances
were when he moved for a committee on Irish affairs in 1866,
and when in 1878 he passionately opposed the policy of the
Beaconsfield cabinet in India. He nevertheless supported Lord
Beaconsfield at the dissolution, regarding Mr Gladstone’s accession
to power with much greater alarm. He was a determined
opponent of Mr Gladstone’s Home Rule policy. He died on the
9th of October 1894. None ever doubted his capacity or his
conscientiousness, but he was generally deemed impracticable
and disagreeable. Prince Albert, however, who expressed
himself as ready to subscribe to all Grey’s principles, and
applauded him for having principles, told Stockmar that, although
dogmatic, he was amenable to argument; and Sir Henry
Taylor credits him with “more freedom from littlenesses of
feeling than I have met before in any public man.” His chief
defect was perceived and expressed by his original tutor and
subsequent adversary in colonial affairs, Edward Gibbon Wakefield,
who wrote, “With more than a common talent for understanding
principles, he has no originality of thought, which compels him to take all his ideas from somebody; and no power of working out theory in practice, which compels him to be always in somebody’s hands as respects decision and action.”
The earl had no sons, and he was followed as 4th earl by his nephew Albert Henry George (b. 1851), who in 1904 became governor-general of Canada.
GREY, LADY JANE (1537–1554), a lady remarkable no
less for her accomplishments than for her misfortunes, was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII. of England. Her descent from that king was traced through a line of females. His second daughter Mary, after being left a widow by Louis XII. of France, married Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, who was
a favourite with her brother King Henry VIII. Of this marriage
came two daughters, the elder of whom, Lady Frances Brandon,
was married to Henry Grey, marquess of Dorset; and their
issue, again, consisted of daughters only. Lady Jane, the
subject of this article, was the eldest of three whom the marquess
had by Lady Frances. Thus it will appear that even if the crown
of England had ever fallen into the female line of descent from
Henry VII., she could not have put in a rightful claim unless the
issue of his elder daughter, Margaret, had become extinct.
But Margaret had married James IV. of Scotland; and, though
her descendant, James VI., was ultimately called to the English
throne, Henry VIII. had placed her family after that of his second
sister in the succession; so that, failing the lawful issue of Henry
himself, Lady Jane would, according to this arrangement,
have succeeded. It was to these circumstances that she owed
her exceptional position in history, and became the victim of an
ambition which was not her own.
She was born at her father’s seat named Bradgate in Leicestershire about the year 1537. Her parents, though severe disciplinarians, bestowed more than ordinary care upon her education, and she herself was so teachable and delighted so much in study that she became the marvel of the age for her acquirements. She not only excelled in needlework and in music, both vocal and instrumental, but while still very young she had thoroughly mastered Latin, Greek, French and Italian. She was able to speak and write both Greek and Latin with an accuracy that satisfied even such critics as Ascham and her tutor Dr Aylmer, afterwards bishop of London. She also acquired some knowledge of at least three Oriental tongues, Hebrew, Chaldee and Arabic. In Ascham’s Schoolmaster is given a touching account of the devotion with which she pursued her studies and the harshness she experienced from her parents. The love of learning was her solace; in reading Demosthenes and Plato she found a refuge from domestic unhappiness. When about ten years old she was placed for a time in the household of Thomas, Lord Seymour, who, having obtained her wardship, induced her parents to let her stay with him, even after the death of his wife, Queen
